Definition of the Nero Decree

Hitler was obsessed, especially at the end of the war, with the Twilight of the gods, and as in the Götterdämmerung, He also wanted to burn everything, leave a defeated Germany also destroyed so that the victorious allied powers could not take advantage of any of it, which he specified in the call Nero order.

The Nero order was a directive signed by Adolf Hitler to destroy all infrastructure and production centers of Germany at the end of the Second World War to apply a policy of "scorched earth" before the armies invaders.

The call politics from Burned ground It was not something new in warfare, and had been practiced since time immemorial, the most famous occasions being that it has been practiced, by the Russians during the Napoleonic invasion, and by the Soviets during the Second World War before the invasion German.

It is not ruled out that Hitler was inspired by the destruction left behind by the troops Soviet forces to hinder the Nazi advance, but the territories that made up the former USSR they presented a

geography much more conducive to it: more desert and with more extreme climates.

The idea of ​​any scorched earth practice and, as such, of the Nero order itself, is to destroy all infrastructure and whatever can supply an invading army.

Logistics, feeding and equipping a large contingent of soldiers, is one of the most complicated tasks in military practice, and all experts agree that it can lead to a conflict.

Depriving an invading army of oil and food, for example, forces it to bring in everything from behind its front lines, requiring personnel, transport, and time, in addition to stopping the offensives, since it is not possible to advance in territory enemy without having what is necessary, secure food and Water, just like him fuel.

For the most part, the provisions of the Nero decree were not executed.

This is mainly due to two reasons: on the one hand, some German leaders and commanders refused to be executed. The most famous case was that of Albert Speer, the Reich's minister of armaments and war, who came to explain to Hitler in person in the bunker, why he had not complied with his dictates.

The reason of those who prevented the destruction of key infrastructure was that, given the war lost, they thought about the postwar period and not leaving the German people helpless to help a speedy recovery.

Hitler considered, in the final days of the war, that the German people had failed him and that he therefore deserved that final punishment.

Other breaches were due to the impossibility of materializing the destruction of the sentenced infrastructures; the advance of the enemy troops, especially the Soviets, made it impossible to destroy many infrastructures before they were taken by the enemy, while in other cases, the chaos typical of the final days of the conflict, caused that the orders simply did not arrive, were not well communicated, or not had resources to fulfill them (such as lack of sufficient explosives).

Photo: Fotolia - evilinside

Issues in Nero Decree